


Holding on

by suchaehwa



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Bathing/Washing, Blood, Bombing, Caretaking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Naked Female Clothed Male, Non-Sexual Intimacy, One Shot, can be read as platonic, romantic undertones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:01:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22773814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suchaehwa/pseuds/suchaehwa
Summary: When she comes to, truly wakes up from her shock, she’s sitting in a bathtub - Frank’s bathtub- and he’s wiping her face with a wet cloth, wringing it out in the water and slowly coloring it a deeper shade of pink each time. There's a bowl with glass shards in it on the floor that he's picked out of her hair and skin.orKaren's office is bombed and Frank takes care of her in the aftermath.
Relationships: Frank Castle/Karen Page
Comments: 4
Kudos: 100





	Holding on

**Author's Note:**

> My inspiration is the lovely (and yet not so lovely) scene between Madani and Russo where she sits bloodied in the bathtub and he cares for her. I love Madani, hate Russo (he’s a great character but an awful person) but do you know what i love more? Kastle! It’s been years and my love for them will never die.  
> I think the scene is beautiful and when you take away the aspect of murder and all that it’s a perfect hurt/comfort moment so this is just an excuse for me to write my favorite murdering husband taking care of my most wonderful wife after a bomb goes off.

Karen had thought that the chances of the office being bombed twice were next to none, there’s no one after her anymore- at least not that she knows of- and she hasn’t written anything too upsetting recently, and so when it happens she’s in even more shock than the first time.

It’s worse this time, so much worse, because this time not everyone makes it out in one piece. They’d taken precautions after the first bombing, had started screening all packages and envelopes with a metal detector, but no one ever thought to check the pizza delivery man. It was unimaginable that the barely legal kid that had come into the office to deliver the pizzas they’d ordered would have had any other intentions than to deliver their food and accept the generous tip from everyone at the office- they'd felt a little bad about ordering ten pizzas during the lunch rush hour.

He’d left them on the desk, asked Ellison to sign the delivery, and bid them a hasty ‘goodbye’. Karen hadn’t been particularly hungry then, so she’d remained at her desk to finish up the story on the old lady who’d adopted over twenty cats during the past year, it wasn’t her usual story but the city had been fairly quiet lately. 

She’d sniffed the air as a waft of melting cheese and pepperoni had entered her office, and for a second she’d entertained the thought of just grabbing one slice to satisfy her greasy cravings- and then all she could smell was smoke, and fire and blood. 

It happened quickly, one second she could hear people calling dibs on slices and others complaining about the toppings, and then all she could hear was screaming and moaning and crying. The window to her office had broken and shards of glass decorated her hair and her skin, for a second she hadn't been able to tell up from down, left from right, and she had laid there helpless and confused. After a moment’s rest she’d begun to crawl out from her office to where her coworkers had been lying in various states of terrible. Her hand had grabbed onto something warm and sticky and she’d looked down to see her hand grabbing a leg, only a leg. She’d almost thrown up right then and there but had steeled herself and kept crawling, Ellison had been collapsed against the wall nearest to her office and after a quick examination she'd realized that, thankfully, he wasn’t dead.

But others weren't as lucky, Sophie, the girl they’d hired just last week, had been lying a few feet away from her, gasping for air as she was slowly drowning in her own blood, Karen had crawled as fast as her bruised body could and reached to cup the girl’s bloody face.

She wasn’t even 25 yet, so very young and so very passionate about journalism, Karen had herself vouched for her during the vetting process and Ellison had trusted her judgement. He shouldn’t have. Because she'd died on the cold floor covered in blood and it was Karen’s fault. “S-Sophie,” Karen had barely recognized her own voice, it had come out louder than she expected and Sophie had jerked under her. Karen knows how to stitch wound up, knows how to extract a bullet from someone’s shoulder and abdomen, but she has no idea what to do when someone’s coughing up blood and drowning on dry land. 

Somewhere in the background Karen had heard sirens and the frantic yells from outside but she had been too focused on Sophie slowly dying, on her breathing becoming erratic as she struggled to suck oxygen into her blood filled lungs, on the tears that had decorated her cheeks because she knew she was dying, and on the way Sophie had gripped Karen’s hand on her cheek and squeezed. 

When the fireman had grabbed Karen from behind and pulled her up Sophie was already dead, she had taken a shuddering breath, her last, and then fallen quiet, still, lifeless. And Karen had watched it all.

“Ma’am, are you alright? Are you injured?” the fireman had asked and it had taken more strength than she had to shake her head. She’d been led out of the office and out onto the street by the fireman and his tight grip on her arm. There had been a dozen ambulances blocking the street, police cars scattered around the building and large fire trucks parked at the very front. 

A police officer had come up to relieve the fireman of his duty so that he could go back to help the others and Karen had simply let the cop grab a hold of her and pull her away, he'd been gentle with his touch. He had led her to the left corner of the building where a car that certainly wasn’t a police car was parked and only then had she truly looked at him. “Frank.”

They’d driven to his apartment and under other circumstances Karen would have takrn notice of where she was, made some remark on his choice of apartment, or his furniture, or the dog sleeping on the couch- she didn’t know he had one- but now she had let him steer her through the apartment to the bathroom without a word. 

When she comes to, truly wakes up from her shock, she’s sitting in a bathtub - Frank’s bathtub- and he’s wiping her face with a wet cloth, wringing it out in the water and slowly coloring it a deeper shade of pink each time. There's a bowl with glass shards in it on the floor that he's picked out of her hair and skin.

“Frank,” she says, her voice sounds dead to her ears, low and emotionless. “Hey,” he responds, simply and quietly, and it’s so very Frank and so very much what she needs after all the yelling and the crying and the loud sirens. It’s quiet in the bathroom, and she can’t hear anything outside either.

“Frank,” she repeats and her voice cracks pitifully, he stops wiping at her face and slowly wrings out the rag, she’s shaking, she realizes. The water is warm on her naked skin and the air is pleasant and yet her teeth chatter loudly. It’s midday, which makes everything even more surreal, and the bright light from outside brightens the bathroom to the point where she can see every single detail of her body, the black spots from soot and smoke, and the blood from where the glass cut her skin, and there’s a red substance on her arm that she realizes is tomato sauce.

She chokes on something between a laugh and a sob and frantically splashes water on her arm and starts scrubbing furiously. There’s a lump in her throat that feels like a sob but could very well be vomit trying to get out. “Karen, hey, shh,” Frank drops the rag in the water with a loud splash and reaches with both his hands to cup her face, “hey, look at me,” he orders quietly, yet firmly.

She turns her head and meets his eyes, the dark brown irises surrounded by dark, short, almost nonexistent lashes, are so very familiar. The way they crinkle with worry and search her own, for what she doesn’t know. All she knows is that the panic inside her is rising and he’s too far away. She leans forward, goes straight for his face and she can see the shock on his face just before their foreheads meet. He holds her face tighter in his big, calloused hands, and she feels guilty for taking comfort in it- she can’t imagine she was much of a comfort to Sophie. Oh god, Sophie.

This time when the lump grows in her throat she knows exactly what’s coming, her whole body shudders as the sob erupts from her throat, her chest feels like it might explode from the pressure coming from inside and her head hurts. He shushes her, but not to keep her quiet. If she wants to yell he’ll gladly let her do it, if she wants to scream herself hoarse then he’ll let her do that too, wouldn’t be the weirdest thing happening in this neighborhood. He can handle anger and rage and destruction. But seeing Karen sitting so vulnerable and naked in his bathtub, baring her feelings like this, is new, and it scares him how much his heart hurts because of her pain.

“Oh, Frank,” she mumbles through her sobs and grasps the front of his shirt to pull him closer so that their noses are pressed flat together and her tears trail down his own cheeks. He reaches down with one hand into the tub and grabs her from underneath her knees and the other slowly travels to land on the middle of her back, and then he’s hoisting her up and out of the tub and pulls her into his lap. Her arms close around his neck and her face burrows into his neck where she continues to sob, he winds his own arms around her midsection before letting one settle in her hair.

The loud and heavy sobs slowly die and become replaced by silent crying, her grip is tight as ever on him and as much as he doesn’t want to let her go he can tell that she’s freezing. “Karen,” he mumbles quietly into her hair, and after a few seconds of silence he thinks she might not have heard him, but then she whispers a quiet ‘yeah’ into his shoulder. “I don’t know who’s responsible for all of this, but when I find out, I’m gonna kill ‘em.”

“Okay,” she replies, she doesn’t have the energy to say anything else. She’s so incredibly tired and cold and just wants to sleep for a while, but she doesn’t want to let go of Frank.

“Let’s get you warm,” he says quietly after a moment and rises without trouble from the floor with her in his arms, her nakedness should feel embarrassing, she thinks, but with Frank it doesn’t, that manages to both comfort her and scare her.

He places her on his bed and reaches for a big t-shirt, she raises her arms without having been told to and he slides it over her head like he’s had years of practice, and he has, of course. The man was a father. Gently he sits down next to her and begins to towel her hair, he’s so careful with her, so gentle, and it makes tears spring to her eyes.

When he deems it dry enough to sleep on he lowers the towel and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, “get some rest, karen,” he mumbles quietly but it’s loud in the silent room. A moment of panic seizes her and she grabs a hold of his arm tighter than she needs to, “don’t go,” she says, pleads, and he searches her eyes like he always does when he’s trying to read what she’s really saying, what she’s feeling. “Please,” she adds and that does it, he nods slowly and carefully pushes her to lie down on the pillow, his pillow. 

With grace she didn’t know he possessed he lies down next to her and she crawls into his space until her head is pressed against his chest, “I’m not going anywhere,” he mumbles into her hair. She only moves in closer to him, grabs a fistful of his shirt, and closes her eyes. She won’t let him go, even if he tries to. She’s holding on with both hands.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
